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| layout | page_title | sidebar_current | description |
|---|---|---|---|
| intro | Introduction | what | Welcome to the intro guide to Vault! This guide is the best place to start with Vault. We cover what Vault is, what problems it can solve, how it compares to existing software, and contains a quick start for using Vault. |
Introduction to Vault
Welcome to the intro guide to Vault! This guide is the best place to start with Vault. We cover what Vault is, what problems it can solve, how it compares to existing software, and contains a quick start for using Vault.
If you are already familiar with the basics of Vault, the documentation provides a better reference guide for all available features as well as internals.
What is Vault?
Vault is a tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Vault can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions.
Configuration files describe to Vault the components needed to run a single application or your entire datacenter. Vault generates an execution plan describing what it will do to reach the desired state, and then executes it to build the described infrastructure. As the configuration changes, Vault is able to determine what changed and create incremental execution plans which can be applied.
The infrastructure Vault can manage includes low-level components such as compute instances, storage, and networking, as well as high-level components such as DNS entries, SaaS features, etc.
Examples work best to showcase Vault. Please see the use cases.
The key features of Vault are:
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Infrastructure as Code: Infrastructure is described using a high-level configuration syntax. This allows a blueprint of your datacenter to be versioned and treated as you would any other code. Additionally, infrastructure can be shared and re-used.
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Execution Plans: Vault has a "planning" step where it generates an execution plan. The execution plan shows what Vault will do when you call apply. This lets you avoid any surprises when Vault manipulates infrastructure.
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Resource Graph: Vault builds a graph of all your resources, and parallelizes the creation and modification of any non-dependent resources. Because of this, Vault builds infrastructure as efficiently as possible, and operators get insight into dependencies in their infrastructure.
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Change Automation: Complex changesets can be applied to your infrastructure with minimal human interaction. With the previously mentioned execution plan and resource graph, you know exactly what Vault will change and in what order, avoiding many possible human errors.
Next Steps
See the page on Vault use cases to see the multiple ways Vault can be used. Then see how Vault compares to other software to see how it fits into your existing infrastructure. Finally, continue onwards with the getting started guide to use Vault to manage real infrastructure and to see how it works.